The Mirror Without A Reflection

Now soon, very soon, it might be a fine day or it might be raining, it might be in winter or perhaps as late as next year’s spring – but I will be revealing something here of great importance to you.

 

London Court, a fascinating little outdoor arcade

in Western Australia

Before I do however, I might just re-cap on some past events. You will recall I talked a little about Mansour Ojjeh, the one-time owner of the TAG Formula 1 racing team. He’s a smart man and a good one, but around him lurk people of no goodwill at all. And that is simply because anyone whose family was close to the intelligence groups inside Syria, and who now is possessed of large corporate and technology assets, is in the same space as those with cover stories for covert operations to do with stealing vast sums from taxpayers for any plausible reason that can fly in the media.

Alex Allan - bike rider

You will recall I talked about Sir Alex Allan – well he wasn’t a ‘sir’ back then, when he would come into my restaurant down the arcade in the middle of London Court, and park his Lotus bicycle leaning up against the wall just outside, and get his lunch.

Sir Alex was the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee until he got sick from some mysterious ailment. I must tell you that he always struck me as a thoroughly nice person, a little soft, frankly -, always very well-mannered.

Now London Court itself is an anachronism, built by a gold mining baron Claude De Bernales, but after his death the entire property was largely owned by the Bishop family – the same Bishop family that currently provides Australia with its foreign minister.

Western Australia does have rather a lot more English – I’ll not say exactly British – political connections than is in my own view necessarily healthy, especially since it is so far away from anyplace that scallywags get up to right mischief here and no one ever seems to mind. Why the deep sea divers pretending to fly in/fly out for mining work were all right here doing the preparation when they flew out and spiked the cables that Snowden just talked about. I’ll even give you the name of the New Zealand ‘cover company’ involved: Iron Sands. Snowden didn't tell you about that!

 

Australian PM Abbott - bike rider

For instance, the one-time Prime Minister of England, John Major, owned a premium sea-side restaurant in City Beach here in Western Australia.  MI6 has an outfit running from a cigar business here too – oh dear, have I said something. Anyway, not to worry; as I say, no one cares. The fact that James Packer’s personal lawyer dropped dead in this cigar place from another mysterious reason does not appear to have troubled the Australian Federal Police although if I were them, and I’m not and cannot presume to know more than they should, I would be concerned that things were not going on here that involved other countries and were not any of Australia’s business.

 

Sir Alex Allan and John Major

In all events, long gone are the days when James Bond could look to being provided with the very latest Q-series Aston Martin Vanquish, ‘austerity’ being what it is. These ideas about riding around on high-priced bicycles instead of Bentleys and Astons is from German private industry, by the way, and they have this ‘influence’ on the minds particularly, of the Hard Right in Whitehall and even right here in Canberra. There is this romance that carries over from the German Trading House era in the Far East, when the Hash House Harriers would include the top executive of the main expatriate corporation and he would run around being the ‘hound’ and receiving ‘secret’ messages from the ‘hare’ in odd spots along a designated route.

Worrying, I suppose, that all the masked programming left inside of Range Rovers and Astons (electronic micro-chips) and so on, could be used to hoist them on their own pittards – as it did the young Gaddafi kids – the present-day spooks have elected to go on this endless bike run during which all their most important ideas are discussed, through the beads of sweat pouring from their austere visages.

 

John Kerry - bike rider

And so I remind you of all of this, in order for you to weigh up whether what I will divulge shortly is worth taking note of or not.

Who am I? Wouldn’t you like to know!

Here are three items for openers:

Russian Formula 1 Grand Prix is on this coming 12 October. Will prove interesting.

James Packer, the billionaire casino owner, sounds like a zombie when you talk to him right now.

The BBC will have front row seats at the funeral of Singapore’s much loved dictator, LKY.

James Bond? On His Majesty’s Secret Service? I think not. More like rampaging cocaine-fuelled London City parties and orders coming from moneyed criminals out of control behind the wood-panelled doors of the Big Eight. Did I get it right?

Nothing ‘mysterious’ about it.  Very troubling though, and likely to prove troublesome. Anyone from an Australian security intelligence agency reading here think you’re gonna miss out on the trouble, think again. You are right in the middle of it and they will blame you. Because you are the dummies who are letting it happen under your noses. There's nothing aristocratic, sovereign-honouring, or civil about this mob; they're a bunch of second-rate mercantile criminals, from a criminal class, and are going to lead a lot of people a lot astray.

 

Retro-Futurism, Nostalgia... and Mindlessness

Is it nostalgia or retro-futurism?

I can’t really imagine young guys like James Packer or Stephen Hung – two of the mega casino owners in Macau today – actually pining for some actual remembered beautiful past.

A 'new' casino in Osaka

It’s basically architects designing for clients who have no imagination...

But then, is the case that the money spending public have no imagination either and simply want to surround themselves with tacky fictions they don’t need to take intellectual responsibility for?

The water level, however, is dropping in the lake. Sure the dinosaurs are still chewing up all the plant life everywhere, but the mud at the lake floor is starting to rise up to the senses where once the crystal waters glowed with life and action.

You couldn’t get a more obvious sign than the current disastrous ticket sales at the general box office; ‘they’ have totally vandalized the Bond franchise, filled up casino gambling halls with electrical machines – hardly electronic, that would unduly dignify them – and destroyed the stock market with fake buying via fake money.

There is no excitement pulse in the veins of the public.

 

Plaza casino, Macau, quite nice, really

small, old-fashioned...

Ethanol will just anaesthetize people until they are literally a dead, a zombie generation. How much of modern alcohol is actually ‘made’ the way it once was, instead, isn’t it just contrived with ethanol and flavour additives in the form of ‘high tech molecules?’

You can drug and anaesthetize the bored public and convince yourself that all is well.

This is all about laziness and lazy-mindedness on the part of the wealthy and the political elite – and it goes on only as long as there is no opposition in evidence.  The real opposition, of course, is not Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or any one of a dozen other possible high-focus but trumped-up villains; the real opposition is the power inside those who not only authentically remember a richer past, but have learned its lessons and can understand what is humanly valuable and how to go about possessing it.

Wouldn’t a Howard Hughes, for example, were he alive today, look upon what is going on as simply the most amazing opportunity? I mean to say, the next time you watch a ‘red carpet’ show on tv, just remember that this was all originally from one single Hughes event, when he decided that a red carpet all the way round two blocks leading into his theatre where the epic ‘Hell’s Angels’ was premiere-ing, might be a good idea.

 

Monteverdi 375 - a bit of nostalgia...

Thing is, it was his idea, and not some stupid copycat version of fifty other people’s past history and otherwise rolling committee decisions on what could be a good idea to foist onto the public to convince them something glamourous or exciting or new, is still going on once the main show is already over.

Take away Fed interference and there would be no stock market right now. Take away Fed fiddling and there would be no gold left in the US. Leave things as they are and the mud, at the bottom of the lake, will mire the heavy swamp monsters into their virtual graveyards. The mud is the turgidity of tax receipt flows. And it is a fact and it is real and it has force.

Mercedes Musk Lollies

“Don’t dial up the Mercedes S-Class FunfKommaSecks’ aromatherapy to ‘musk stick lollies,’ please Köbie!”

That’s my 8 year old level three Autistic kid’s name...

He’s named after an ancestor of mine – someone from Scotland. ‘Köbie’ is the Swiss contraction of the name in honour of the golden days of secret Swiss bank accounts.

New S-Class, has mood lighting and aromatherapy.
The 'Guard' version just been leased by the Oz government for
the G20 meeting featuring Uncle Vanya

Anyway look there are no ‘musk stick lolly’ options on the factory original aromatherapy electronics in the latest Mercedes S-Class but I assure you that would never stop a driven Autistic kid.

It’s quite fascinating don’t you find, especially those of us here who are engaged in any kind of business – when you are going into some deal or other, there is this whole seriousness and gravity and intent and cautiousness; and then afterwards if it is very successful there is a total diametric change towards levity and even outright silliness.

All the same, some deals require strict confidentiality a long ways past even when they have been formally concluded. And that is the position I find myself in at present.

Oh yes I have done something pretty good – or ba-a-a-a-d, if you want to be colloquial about it. And maybe ‘bad’ is the correct accurate description anyway.

Seriously, isn't this beautiful?
...And rare.

There are so few really exciting ventures going on in today’s world of business – Alibaba is plain stupid and relies on a business model that everyone is chasing concerning extending social media networks and pretending they are all necessarily going to turn into money some day.

I pointed out here a while back that even the world’s leading private investment fund returned 12-ish percent last year on several billions. Well 12 per cent is not interesting to me! 500 per cent might be and even then it’s going to have to be to do with something that I am fundamentally interested in.

In a world in which the Fed has manipulated the evolved, the tried and true benchmarks of risk, 12 per cent against the government risk free rate is sick. It is dangerous to indulge in these specious ‘good’ return numbers when everyone of experience in risk assessment knows that risk benchmarking has been mischievously tampered with by an authority which accounts to no one for its errors, mistakes, and sheer selfish dissembling.



Up the top of that tall building again...
Money never sleeps, Bud. But you have
to have a good idea otherwise it does sleep!

In such a world, people who really have some business model that is truly profitable and exciting and safe, have to be concerned with great earnestness, about not allowing too many copycats into the picture.

Alibaba - and the Forty Thieves... Al-adin they already shot in some compound in Pakistan. Take me to the story teller, not to the story. To the fable-maker, not the fable.

The Still Of Southern Winter

Sometimes don’t you feel as though you want some real quiet? You know, that perfectly still early morning, where the thick mists make no sound as they hang and gather in the rolling pastures, along the tree line, down in the vales...

A seriously good modern wine

Make no mistake, when people like LVMH buy a winery like the South Western Australian Cape Mentelle Wines, the place is already a highly developed, modern, technically advanced piece of the civilized world. Sure it’s a very beautiful place – the winery itself – and pretty peaceful too. And let me tell you the wines and the food they prepare down there are staggeringly wonderful!

But there is also something to be said for sheer, absolute wilderness – those places where no one goes.

Such places still exist here in Western Australia. And once you get here, if you ever do get here, it takes only a few minutes after you step out of your car before you realise that this place is pristine: kookaburras will come right up to you and look you over to see what the hell this new visitor is all about, and so will the kangaroos. They aren’t afraid of humans because no humans come here.

It’s about to be Spring here in Australia and the mad crowds of the Melbourne Thoroughbred Racing Carnival are going to turn up on that first Tuesday in November for the world’s best two-mile race.

Not saying where this actually is!

Lost in all the buzz will be the years and days gone by, when whalers worked the Southern-most coasts. Now, there are still whales but no whalers. And very few people. In some places there are no people at all. Western Australia is a million square miles. And most of it empty. And some of it is just too far away even for the most ardent tourist and wanderer to go just to get some silence. But my god, what silence. Actually I can hear the condensation of the fog or the mist burble and hiss when it hits the outside camp fire in the cold early morning...

Nisteling

It has been quite a deliberate decision on my part to steer as clear away as possible from any reference to the ‘world at war’ business that has been going on, on all of our television screens of late.

Yeah I have been in one of these -
they are hugely FAST!

For one thing, from a psychological perspective – and don’t forget, I have had some training in a classical school of psychology under the late Paul Ritter, the polymath who was one of the people who laid the foundation stones at the original World Trade Centre sites many many years ago now – so, well, from that perspective of psychology, the talking heads on our screens are exhibiting limited dimensionality in their ‘delivery...’

One of the most important ideas I have come across in recent times is something ‘invented’ I suppose, you might say, by another Australian – Robert J. Burrowes. He calls his idea ‘nisteling,’ which is a way of ‘deep listening’ to people when they speak or deliver a portrayal of their personality, whether in entertainment or in a political message or just generally, any communication that involves and includes their physical person. As you will certainly know, another nearby resident over here – Kate Bush – after many years, returned to the stage in an acclaimed concert in England. And of course, she is another of ‘we’ interested bystanders in psychology, in her case she has been a long-time proponent of Reichian ideas on physiological expression of the human psyche.

Another great mathematician and philosopher, A. K. Dewdney, the person who cast doubt on the technical reality of mobile phone calls from planes involved in the 9/11 affair, was another with much to say about dimensionality and how people use it and how it also ‘shapes’ the ways in which we act and move.

Pietro Frua's Monteverdi -
a 'sharp' design 

With true shape and geometry, you are still able to humanise the outcomes even when you employ very sharp lines and edges. One need only reflect on the work of the greatest Italian designers of recent times to see the subtlety that sharpness may display.

By contrast, current expressions of geopolitics are crude and blunt – and polyphonic. Well perhaps not polyphonic even though there may be some effort being exerted to make it so; it’s more cacophonic.

BNY Mellon was one of the first banks to ‘discover’ the impact of internet and computerised communications and data storing and analysis systems. They started a subsidiary variously called Eagle this-and-that back in the early 90’s – Eagle Star, I believe was an iteration which was quite famous and successful. Now, they are probably the leading financial technology providers who use ‘the Cloud.’ Personally I don’t have much problem with the Cloud at all, it’s another way Boston Intelligence establishments of the US government can have some control over the world – and they do it all quite efficiently. God, without these kinds of logistical understandings, the cheeseburger is going to be quite inaccessible to poor people like myself. I am fascinated that investment funds associated with Mellon are still able to return 12% when everything has been cut-back so much in order to procure what looks like the old school Harvard Business Method calculation annual growth figure.

The only difficulty in my mind, with the nominal results, is in the human delivery of the message. Neil Woodford, the leading light of these ‘investment funds’ sounds like he is talking about a wine brand. Sounds like he is a tee-totalling accountant talking about a wine... Sounds great, just doesn’t sound right to a wine drinker though. What do I know? He’s supposed to be in charge of billions. People give him billions apparently, to ‘look after’ and to invest. Which I suppose, is a great vote of confidence for the LSE where he got most of his academic credentials.

A girl sad because her iCloud
selfie account wasn't hacked.

Which leads me to a last fascinating point for today - can you learn to make a million bucks from ‘zilch’ base at an academic institution? Well... It seems that if you are as bright as Neil Woodford, you can certainly achieve an annual return of over 10% if people give you several billions to play with.

That however, is probably not, what you or I are intending to achieve. We, being on the poor end of the social and economic scales, are after much more absurdly ambitious percentages!

But then that’s what makes Woodford look and sound like a boring twat – he’s not overjoyed by the results he has achieved. But then again, that’s the difference between Pietro Frua and some faceless committee who designs Ford cars in the US to day. Frua’s children all made it to high security museums in Switzerland where people who appreciate them still make pilgrimage. The IRS has not understood enough to thieve the ownership plate numbers from compromised design collection managers – and they never will and they do not even care.

The subtle sharpness of great design is ever comprehended only by the few and the rare. To their great joy.